A startup is working on an alternate way to generate nuclear power.

Data centers, we're going to have first dibs.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Stephanie Hughes.

There's been renewed interest in nuclear power in recent years. That's partly thanks to demand from tech companies in search of reliable energy to power

their AI data centers.

The startup Cairo's power has jumped on this opportunity.

Its nuclear reactors are cooled by molten salt.

That's different from traditional reactors,

where the cooling is done by water. In our case, the fuel are actually like little, like, golf ball or

ping pong ball size pebbles. That's Mike Laufer, CEO and co-founder of Cairo's power.

So they're, imagine like these floating golf balls in the salt.

That's kind of what our reactor looks like.

It's like an upside-owned gunball machine.

Cairo says using salt helps it develop the technology quickly and then it's safer than

other methods.

The company just started construction on its first power plant, located in eastern Tennessee.

It's called Hermes 2,

and it'll supply energy to the utility in the area, TVA, and specifically to Google to power its

data centers. I talked about this agreement with Alfer. So we have kind of this multi-party

arrangement where we sell power to TVA, TVA will sell power to Google, and then Google will pay Kairos a supplement

based on supporting this technology

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